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Sunday: After a very rainy and dreary arrival Saturday afternoon Sunday I woke up to gorgeous sunshine and incredible views from the airbnb. Being a carriage house (living space above the garage) a couple miles out of town leads to some amazing views out of some large windows. Good weather and a new location meant that it was time to check out the borough (nothing in PA is a town). Ebensburg has a population of just over 3k and is situated in the Allegheny mountains and the city itself is up on top of a hill so there are some actual steep streets and some nice visual elevation change. I spent too much time in the flat south I'm still really appreciating the elevation change 😊 Overall the borough is super cute and seems to be thriving unlike a lot of small towns I've visited. Not many open shop fronts and there are even hobby stores like a music store, dance studio, comic book shop, outdoor store etc. It's set up in a way that there are a few chain shopping centers on the outside of town and everything in the borough seems to be a small business or locally owned
which gives it lots of character. Ebensburg is also the county seat and the courthouse is impressive and there's an old interesting looking jail in downtown next to veteran's park.
Right on the southeastern part of town is a really nice fishing lake and some other recreation like tennis courts, skate park and plans to build a dog park. On the northeast part of town is the borough's water reservoir. According to some reviews online there is a loop trail around the reservoir but I couldn't find the loop- ended up doing and out and back to the upper reservoir and back. Still a nice short local hike (about 3 miles from my airbnb). Overall my first 24 hours of Ebensburg were super positive!
Monday: Ebensburg is at one end of a 46 mile "Rails to Trails". Old railroad essentially has been converted to be a paved trail that connects multiple towns. Being 46 miles and paved and relatively flat means it's not the best hiking trail but it's still scenic and copper and I had to do the first few miles of it. I can imagine it would be ideal for a long bike ride!
Tuesday:
An adventure to Loretto, PA to pick up a potential amazon package. Amazon said the locker was accessible 24/7 and located outside of the mail room. Turns out it's outside of the mailroom on Saint Francis University- a catholic school with about 1800 students. I got there after dark (about 9:30pm) and the address did not take me to the mail room. There was not a single person anywhere on campus- not even a security person or another car driving by. Yet lights were on and TVs were even on inside of academic buildings. There were lights on in residential halls- but no movement from inside it was like an abandoned ghost university. So I never found the mail room or the amazon locker... luckily if you don't pick up your package after 3 days it just goes back to amazon and you get a full refund.
Thursday: Went back to the reservoir and this time started on the trail clockwise to see if I could figure out how it looped. There were multiple branches off of the trail but they just lead to other residential access points in town. There really doesn't seem to be a way to
cross the man made stream that connects the lower and upper reservoirs (the loop trail is supposed to circle the lower reservoir and be 2 miles long). So I guess I know of 2 out and back hikes to either side. Who knows.
Friday: Time to check out "the most miserable place to live in PA" aka Johnstown. I'm not sure why I felt compelled to check out the most miserable place in PA but it is only 20 minutes away and Ebensburg is part of the Johnstown census area and Johnstown is the largest town in Cambria county. I think how miserable this place is can be inferred by the fact that I was there at 7pm on a Friday night and I saw 4 restaurants that were open (counting subway as a restaurant too), 4 restaurants that were permanently closed and the building either had a notice that it was condemned or planned to be demolished and another 7 restaurants that were just permanently closed. So the ratio of closed down restaurants to open restaurants was roughly 3 to 1... yikes! The only thing this place has going for it is the steepest vehicular incline plane. But
that is sadly closed for renovations until 2023... There were 2 people performing music in the town center and I suspect that was the event of the week and possibly month for the town.
Saturday: An adventure day of PA started with a stop in Gallitzin to see some historic tunnels. Getting railroad tracks over the Allegheny mountain pass was a big engineering feat in the mid 1800s because they wanted to develop further west to Pittsburgh. I was even lucky enough to see a train come through the tunnel while I was there. They are some very impressive tunnels to have been made in the 1800s (1854, 1855 and 1902 were the completion years for the 3 tunnels). After some train history Copper and I headed to the 1000 step PA challenge. The 1000 steps are just that- 1000 rock stairs on the mountain that are part of the standing stone trail. You gain about 850 feet in elevation in a half mile. There are a few breaks in the steps but it's almost entirely rock stairs. At the top of the steps is an old rock quarry and the steps were built in the 1930s so men
could easily get to work. I cannot imagine that hike being the start of your work day. And yes, there really are over 1000 steps. There are 1037 steps in the official area plus more on the connecting trail and on the ridge above. The view at the top was well worth the climb and coming down was eaiser but not easy- being rock steps and irregular makes going down still a challenge in different ways. Driving back to Ebensburg there were a few scenic overlooks. I didn't realize how scenic central Pennsylvania would be!
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